Heads up everybody! Prepare yourself to be inundated with selfies on your social media pages. June 21 is National Selfie Day and people across the country are sure to celebrate the day with a few snaps of themselves.

But how is it that simple concept of taking a picture of ones self has become one of the most common ways of taking a picture?

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Let's take a look back.

When was the first selfie taken?

While painters like Leonardo Da Vinci and Rembrandt created sketches of themselves in the 15th and 16th centuries, it is not clear when the first selfie was taken.

In 1839, Robert Cornelius snapped a photo of himself looking into a mirror and titled it the "first light Picture every taken." It is one of the first 'self portrait' photographs known to have ever been taken.

When was the word 'selfie' first used?

In an Australian internet forum in 2002, Nathan Hope used the word selfie to describe a photo he had taken of himself after he fell at a friend's birthday party.

“Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer [sic] and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”

Hope did not take credit for creating the word, saying it was just slang. It took another 10 years before selfie would become one of the most commonly used words in the English language.

Is 'selfie' actually a word?

Yes it is.

In 2013, Merriam-Webster added it selfie to its dictionary with the following definition: "An image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera especially for posting on social networks."

It doesn't get much more 21st century than that.

What is the most famous selfie?

Arguably one of the most famous selfies is credited to talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.

She posted it the picture on her Twitter account where it set a record as the most retweeted tweet ever, garnering 3.4 million retweets. While the record was later broken, the selfie remains one of the most recognizable photos posted to Twitter.